Barriers
by YamiKatie
Summary: Jakotsu was never going to let a small thing like dying get in the way of carrying out his desires. And as life leaves him for the second time, an indifferent Inuyasha stays behind to laugh at whatever his last words may be.


A/N: My first Inuyasha story; indeed, my first non-Yuugiou one. Yet it didn't feel strange to write because of that; on the contrary, as I have had some trouble of late summoning my Yuugiou characters from my mind, where they are very happy, onto the screen of my laptop, where they are not quite so content to be. This felt…just so natural and easy; mostly, it just sort of slipped out onto the screen. It's half-past one and I never noticed the time go by; my last memory is of it being about midnight, perhaps…

Anyway, this is centred around Jakotsu, who is far and away my favourite Inuyasha character; he actually rivals Yuugiou's yami-no Bakura on my scale of adoration right now. The resemblances are actually quite striking, particularly their joint appreciation of licking blood off a weapon. I seem to be attracted to that.

I knew that Jakotsu would have to die…and I was certain that Renkotsu would have a hand in it…even so, I was so distraught at his death - and livid at Inuyasha's reaction. (I ran around my house, sobbing, "Atashi-no Jakotsu-chan-wa shinda-yo!" over and over again…) So here is…well, not really an alternative death-scene as such; just…I don't know. But I do know how good and right it felt to write it, and how peaceful I feel right now as a result of writing it. Who knows, perhaps I will write more Inuyasha stories in the future. (shrugs comfortably)

Mm, I don't normally give warnings, but feel obliged to this time; I just want to mention the language issue (apart, of course, from the usual violence)- the occasional "offensive" word (my style in this story is noticeable rougher and more casual than usual, as I felt that was how Inuyasha's Japanese style of talking was best conveyed) , plus one use of "fag" - the use of which I generally object to, as I am very anti-homophobic, but which…well, it seemed to go. And the anime, and Wikipedia, certainly make no secret of the fact that Jakotsu is an effeminate, gay, character. Which is a rather refreshing attitude, because so many of the Yuugiou characters are so obviously gay, and they try to hide it within the banner of "friendship". (In particular, Japanese Yugi's solemn cry of, "Jounouchi-kun…daisuki-da!" was rather humorous, especially given the situation.)

Barriers.

Great smooth stone slabs piled high above one another like a mountain of tombstones; rubble was strewn in careless piles. Some of the stones had smashed into one another upon impact, each one carving a piece out of its brother. There were massive concave bruises disfiguring the largest into the smallest, like someone reaching in and scooping up great curling slices of stone like ice cream, and they lay against one another in the resigned understanding of the dying masses.

And somewhere underneath the rubbly chaos was crushed a limp outline, disrupted contours which had once formed the second and last physical manifestation of one who had had trouble dying and staying dead. It seemed to be becoming easier the second time round, though. And as the stone bore down on him like a carcass on a carcass he could only marvel at how resilient the body seemed; it bent and folded with the fascinating contortions of a young tree in the wind, and although there came the brittle snapping of bones, it seemed as inconsequential as the fracturing of tiny twigs; like the great oak, he was immense…indestructible…always…

"…Here…" he whispered into the darkness.

His murderer swung wearily around. "God_dammit. _Just…die, Jakotsu. Go on."

He smiled sleepily. "That…a dare?" He pawed wishfully at the tombstones around him, tiny hopeful convulsions of movement. His hands were streaked with red as his face was streaked with blue; but now the blue was painted over so that his face now possessed all the colours of the Union Jack - a white base, the blue below the eyes, and red everywhere else. Blood gloved his hands; he felt glad, because it made them feel warm, and the body had long since grown cold.

"It's an order. And I still have two other Shichinnintai shits to get rid of somehow, so quit holding me up."

He tenderly felt the boulder crushing his pelvis; it was a funny, rusty sort of colour. He scratched some of the rustiness off with a nail, and watched as his long, mirrored fingernail clouded over with a dull sheen, to fold and fall into the dark in solitary descent. He had liked his fingernails; even an assassin did not have to neglect their appearance.

"Omae…" The word distorted into a croak. He coughed, clearing his body of the phlegm and the gravel and the clots of blood that clung to the pink tube wall of his narrowing throat like cholesterol to an artery; they sprayed half-heartedly out, to coat the rocks around him. "Then…you won't leave…until I die…?"

Inuyasha let out an exasperated half-growl that finished with a human sound of something like, "Keh. My claws will have grown six inches by the time you finally get round to expiring. Unless you can hurry it up at all?"

Dusty laugh. "I don't…think so."

"You would cling on for another two weeks in there just to piss me off, wouldn't you?"

Jakotsu smiled dreamily, expression clearing of all concern. "I could…live forever…if the face of Inuyasha was always before me."

Yawn; careless wave of Tessaiga back and forth like the swinging of the candle. "I would love to say the same of you; however, your constant perverted mumblings would probably force me to kill myself anyway."

The assassin giggled tiredly into the blank face of the rock.

"So are you going to die anytime soon? If so, I might concede to hang around to hear your last dying words-" the hanyou grimaced briefly, realising the probably content of these last words- "or, if you plan to let your body be crushed to death, which will take a while, then I'll be off."

He shifted a little, out of habit - despite everything, the ever-present energy zinged through his body in blissful ignorance, urging his limbs into wakefulness - and there came the slow answering grind of rock on rock. For a moment his vision was filled with the blurry movement of pebbles singing down, tapping into his arms like jewels, then something darker pressed down on him like a bull charging in slow motion, and he was swamped in shadow. Dizzy flash of consciousness - in, out - and there was something large and round where his chest had been. He arched his neck, exposing pale sliver of dully-gleaming throat, and a scream circled wearily within his body, bouncing off the organs.

After a moment, during which this giant new part of him slid inexorably forward in savouring consuming of body, Inuyasha's voice echoed coolly out of the lesser darkness. "That…looked painful."

His voice was misty with reflection. "Feels…nice. Dark."

"Huh," Inuyasha said to himself.

"If…" Jakotsu could feel his voice twisting a little higher; a hoarse, scraping tone which he felt would certainly not be able to seduce anyone for a while; "If you want to…to hear those dying words…you will…" Clots filled his vision as well as his throat, little bursting balls of red. He choked them down, only to cough them painfully back out as his body tiredly rejected them even now - little worn out fireworks filled the air, throwing themselves spiritlessly against the impassive stone.

Inuyasha took a step closer, tail brushing the dust around him into abstracts. "I'll what?"

Stained lips twitched.

He sighed, and sauntered wearily up to the nest of rubble. "Oi, temee." He was not entirely sure what colour Jakotsu's eyes had ever been - meeting his eyes too often had tended to inspire an appreciative burst of chatter about his unbearable cuteness, so he had turned to attempting to slice his adversary up without looking at him, which made things slightly more interesting. It had also made the other even more thrilled.

_Kawaii-na! Daisuki-da!_

Now, they had drained away to the same dull grey as the makeshift burial grounds around him.

He leaned forward a little. "Hurry it up."

Dry little sound, trickling out like a handful of dust from a closed fist: "…You will… have to pull me…out…"

"Sod that." He punched a rock impatiently; his fist glanced off its blank, sneering face. "In case you had forgotten, I am here to make sure you die, not to save you."

"I don't…think even that Naraku…whoever he was…could save me."

"Neither do I," Inuyasha mused to himself, as he surveyed the little that was visible - for all he knew, all that was actually left - of the second eldest brother of the most able group of assassins that had existed in any lifetime - and they had managed two. Only, they had not really been assassins…more akin to mercenaries, with themselves their only masters.

"Well, I suppose I could spare a few more minutes." He pointedly drawled the sentence, only to wonder afterwards whether the person on the receiving end ever even registered the sarcasm. "Fine then, let's get you out."

Soft, contented little sigh issuing from somewhere below the rock.

"Don't take it the wrong way, you stupid fag. Remember, this is all so I get to watch you die." And with that, he seized the largest rock - it was so large that the word "rock" seemed in this case to be a diminutive, for something this size should require a new name altogether - and with a heave of taloned claws yanked it up.

"Fuck!"

It was like trying to lift a tank. A tank like Ginkotsu had been. It rolled from his hands - he withdrew them just in time - and the immeasurable weight slammed back down, smashing Jakotsu back against the rubble.

"Aw, fuck." _So_ not the point of that. He bent cautiously down. "Hey, perv. You still alive?"

He caught a glimmer of baffled grey eyes, before witnessing Jakotsu's body sliding down into his abyss, bathed in stone. Swearing, he clambered up with all the awkward bouncing of an overgrown dog, and squeezed himself into the gap between the immense boulder and the wall. The muscles burst through his flesh like parasites as he flung his entire weight at it, kicking back against the wall. Grudging grind beneath his splitting palms - and with a heave that took not only all his strength but all the reserves of strength stored in every aching cell, he forced the elephantine weight to slam with wounded pride back against the opposite wall. He exhaled and flexed his wrists, eyes wide, ears twitching.

Now that the stone had been rolled away, he could see a little more of the assassin's body - or what was left of it, anyway. Snapped limbs weaved over and under and around stones with the false flexibility of his sword - Inuyasha glanced over his shoulder, and discerned the shattered crescents of metal like burial markers, stuck shivering into the rocks like toothpicks.

He was not certain as to whether his adversary had always been that thin, or if it had been the massive rock which had left him as ironed-out as paper; the armour under the kimono had crumpled, its job done. Flowers bloomed eternally on the kimono which lay twisted in loving rips and shreds around white limbs - yellow flowers, and purple, and the scarlet ones, which were not frozen in time like the rest but instead blooming further, spreading out across the twisted chest, seeping gently in their own life rhythm as they fed on their wearer.

Jakotsu opened his blurry grey eyes; there was that same dopey, baffled smile as before, as he glanced down at himself, and at Inuyasha yanking away another rock. His body convulsed tiredly as another weight was removed, and he whispered wonderingly, "It…hurts." His eyes asked his murderer why.

The hanyou shrugged, looking away for a moment. "…Of course it does. You're dying; it is supposed to hurt."

"Always…?"

"I think so. Eventually it will fade, and then go away entirely; but of course, by then you will be too dead to appreciate it anyway."

"We entered life encased in the pain of our mothers…" Jakotsu murmured to himself. "It seems fair…to take that pain back."

"Well, however you want to think of it as." His calculating gaze swept over the other. "It will take me an age to lift all these things off you; and like I mentioned, I don't have that sort of time. And I wouldn't be prepared to spare it if I did. So I am going to drag you out."

A slow smile of ecstasy spread like smeared butter all over the mercenary's face.

"And if you get a hard-on while I wrench you out, you're going straight back under. Got it?"

He received only a glassy gaze in response. With another derisive sound, Inuyasha plunged his hand into the sea of rubble and fished around; he felt what might have once been an arm, and grasped it cautiously. A brief tug assured him that it was indeed still connected to something, and he guided it towards the surface like a drowned sailor. The white fingers twitched, tasting the air, before falling back limply onto his arm. They lay there, passive, but not passive enough.

"Stop fucking touching me."

"Inuyasha is so soft…" the other person breathed.

The hanyou flung the fingers away. "You couldn't stop if you tried, could you?"

Sleepy smile, eyes closed.

Inuyasha gave him a Glare for several long minutes, before realising it was wasted on someone with their eyes so completely shut, and delved around in defeat for some other part of Jakotsu that was still attached to him. He was not at all certain which, if any, of the parts of their bodies these damn zombies needed to stay alive - perhaps the Shikon shard was sufficient in itself - and so it was pure guesswork as to whether what he was grasping was actually an active body part or an ex one. He was pretty sure he got stabbed by a stray toe at one point.

"All right, found you. At least I think it still belongs to you." He prodded a wrist gingerly. "Feel that?"

He was still smiling, the useless fuck. Looked far too happy for someone who was supposed to be dying. "I really don't know." Voice getting really raspy now.

"Great." He turned, heard a whisper behind him, and turned just in time to recoil from the thick, fleshy splatter that coated the rock next to him in shining crimson. He let out a growl that was all-dog, and jabbed a finger at the thin face, long hair menace tendrils of black and red. "You hit me with that and I'll smear it all over your pretty face, okay?"

Pulling away, to retch haltingly. And still managing to smile, because he had never been called pretty by this person before. And he knew it was just out of annoyance, and that Inuyasha would snap at him if he pointed it out, and so he held the words close to him, closer than the embrace of the dark and the rocks and the thick, thick blood, and within himself, where it was still safe, he caressed them.

Inuyasha sneered to no one in particular, just getting tired of all this; and he seized what was left of the yellow and purple kimono and threw the assassin's broken and tired body onto the dirt-swathed floor. Dust backed away, and then crept back forward.

"Happy now? That counted as fulfilling your dying wish, by the way, so don't expect me to do anything else for you."

His hair was already infected by dust, greyed twenty years older; and the elaborate ornamental pins that had held it in loose, messy confinement were now yanked loose and spread around him in tragic piles of puzzlement. Jakotsu lay quietly on the ground, his crushed body tapering away to nothing, as loose and floppy and pretty as a doll's. He nudged his fingers forward with little effortful twitches, and chased his hair pins round in tiny endless circles. His blood-streaked hair flopped in his eyes, staining his vision further; he could not spare the energy to push it away. Eventually he closed his thin fists around them, bringing the pins close to him where he could stare at them in hazy contentment.

"Inu…yasha…"

Dog-yawn. He had watched the painful movements from where he was now crouched on the floor, sweeping the dust with his tail. "What now?"

"…Do my hair for me."

"Am I your private hairdresser now as well as a toyboy?"

"Inuyasha…would fulfil either role very well," Jakotsu murmured.

"You really need to shut up and die."

"I don't like my hair like this…all bloody…and in my face…"

He sighed deeply, snatched the hair pins from the fist that slowly collapsed open, and in a few moments had created a sort of messy bun. "That all right? Or should I just shampoo it for you as well?"

"I would rather not take that risk…" Shaky breath, then he resumed: "The hands of Inuyasha are soft, so soft…but not in the way of one accustomed to using shampoo."

Inuyasha had been wondering where the idea of respecting the dying had come from; and also the idea that they should take as long as possible to go about their business, and on the way inconvenience as many people as possible. He did, after all, have a schedule. Granted, at the moment it was a very loose one consisting of nothing more than of a plan to hunt down first Renkotsu and then Bankotsu himself…but at least he actually still had an idea of what he hoped to accomplish in his life. The person before him seemed to be changing his mind about it every second.

The dying person before him, who had been staring glassily into nothing for several moments now, now reached shakily up - he had only to raise his hand a few inches off the ground, but such was his growing loss of control over his body that it was only after a minute of pronounced but silent struggle that he managed to bring up his fingers to touch his neck; it was wreathed in still-dripping crimson, while the rest of his body existed in stiff, clotted dryness. The tips of his fingers, thin and tapering, brushed his collarbones, now very prominent and seeming about to burst the skin that was drawn tightly over them - he flicked one long, manicured nail - the only one still unbroken, over the papery skin of his throat, before gouging out a fine sliver of flesh. There was a brief glimmer of light, and then he eased it back in, before his hand dropped, exhausted, back into the awaiting dust of the ground.

"When you go…leave my shard."

Snort. "Why? I happen to be one of the many collecting them. And leaving it in will ensure you some degree of life, even if it is unconscious, senseless life. Which is about all your body will be capable of offering you very soon."

"With it…" His lips moved a little, seeking air; it seemed to hiss out of his body as soon as it entered. "…I…maintain this appearance. I will be…recognised."

"An anonymous death, after all your attention-seeking, would be ironic, but fitting."

Ignoring this: "My Bankotsu-ouaniki…will mourn me. I have to ensure…something is left behind. If my shard is gone, if my remains…are never found…he will fear…I have left him…"

Inuyasha snorted again. "I hate to tear apart all this brotherly love, but I feel rather obliged to point out that I highly doubt he will mourn your death. I don't think he has it in him to mourn anyone's death except his own."

Brief, grimacing smile. "Silly…silly Inuyasha…He will scream for me. He'll stand upon my bones and scream...and scream…and scream…" His glassy eyes grew feverish, delirious. "When my brother makes his last stand, we will all be with him…I will be at his side, and when he strikes you down with Banryuu, I will…be the last person you…see…" His voice faded away, eyes dulling.

Inuyasha stood. "…All right, I'm going now. I can get your shard back after killing Bankotsu anyway; and if he has another extra one it will just spice things up a bit more. Have a nice time dying; I, on the other hand, have things to do, people to kill." He proceeded to swagger off; after a moment, he paused, and looked at the fragment crescents of the serpent sword just visible in the rubble, gleaming darkly like fresh slices of bone. "These can keep you company." He tossed the broken metal pieces contemptuously towards the broken pieces of their master.

"You forgot one," Jakotsu murmured, voice almost all gone now. He coughed, weakly, and there came another ragged expulsion of clotted crimson.

Inuyasha grunted and looked around; there it was, in the corner, a faint curve of mirror. He slung it roughly over; the assassin held out his hands for it. Inuyasha growled again, temper on the brink of explosion, and, crouching right over him, shoved it in his hands. "_There."_

Jakotsu touched it briefly. Then he brought up his hands and tugged Inuyasha's hair towards him; they collided. White hands were running wondrously though that silky hair like gushing fingers through water, reverent in their adoration, fingers twitching the furry ears back and forth in delight. And the lips of Inuyasha were so, so soft, softer than skin, and they parted before him, and he drank him down into himself, the last drink he would ever have, pulling him down into the void to join him.

Startled yip, pure-dog again, and he was pulling away; and those skeletal hands were holding on, they wouldn't let go, so that he pulled and pulled and then some of his white hair was clasped between Jakotsu's adoring fingers. "So…soft…" The shard in his throat pulsed briefly; his face was lit with the purest delight. "So…" The blood leaked from his eyes into thin streams, twisting at his cheekbones and reuniting around his chin in dripping satisfaction.

Inuyasha glanced helplessly at him; angry, confused, angry; and then he turned and ran; for he had a schedule to adhere to, didn't he?

But Jakotsu…well, he had all the time in the world. And as he slipped sideways again for the final time - because sitting up was tiring, and he wondering if it was really necessary anymore - the white hair was clutched in his skeletal fingers, and when the shard at his throat pulsed again and then went dark, still he clutched those strands of that white, white hair, and those fingers that were now only bones would clutch them forever.

……………

A/N: I did it! I wrote my first non-Yuugiou! (does Happy Dance)

I had to mention Bankotsu because, out of all of the brothers, Jakotsu was portrayed as being closest to him; that scene with them together was so funny, and so sweet…I felt that if Inuyasha removed the shard, reducing Jakotsu to a corpse, then Bankotsu would never find him and then assume that, just like Renkotsu, Jakotsu had planned to betray him. And the thing at the end with the hair: at the end, all that is left of Jakotsu is a hair pin and a few strands of black hair. (cries for him all over again) Why did he have to go…? He was so honest and altruistic, and he loved Bankotsu so much…(in a brotherly way) and Inuyasha just as much…(in a definitely non-brotherly way)… (is utterly inconsolable)


End file.
